Of Death and other Mistakes
by Tamiamus
Summary: A fateful meeting in a graveyard leads to an unexpected outcome. BtVSHP


Title: Of Death and other Mistakes

Author: Tamiamus

Rating:FR-13

Warnings: Character death

Disclaimer: BtVS is owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemies. Harry Potter is owned by J. K. Rowling and Warner Brothers. I am only playing with them for no profit and will return them to their respective owners unharmed.

Buffy drew her light jacket around her as the wind picked up again. The weather was uncommonly cold for California, as the longest living slayer walked down the dark alley behind the bronze. It a was late Tuesday night and the streets were deserted. The only sound in the night were those of her heels striking the pavement beneath her. For a moment she contemplated going home since the undead population of Sunnydale seemed to be taking a holiday this night. But hearing Giles' lecture on her sacred duty in her mind she knew she would at least have to canvass one or two of the more active graveyards before she could call it a night.

The first graveyard of the night yielded three vampires, one more stupid and unskilled than the other. Buffy was half convinced that even if she hadn't dusted them they might have inadvertently killed them selves by tripping over their feet and getting impaled by a tree root. She was on her way towards the gates leading out of the cemetery when a growl stopped her. She quickly turned and barely managed to duck under the swing of a heavy grayish green arm. As she raised herself up from the ground where she had fallen in her effort to avoid the limb, she was faced with a seven foot tall polgara demon.

'Polgara demon, that's the thing with the arm spike thingy right?' she had barely finished the thought, as a three foot long spike shoot out of the demon's forearm and nearly skewered her through the abdomen. She turned away and launched herself up in the air, kicking the demon in the head with her right foot. Before the demon got to it's feet again she had already taken out her stake and punched it through his breastplate. For a short moment it seemed as if the demon's armoured body would sustain the hit of her trusted Mister Pointy, but as she put all her considerable slayer strength into the punch, she felt the breastplate shatter under the wood, and her stake found it's way into the polgara's heart. With a grunt Buffy got up from her crouched position on the ground and after making sure the demon was indeed death, you couldn't be too sure of these things in a place like Sunnyhell after all, she brushed the grass stains off her pants and quietly left the, now peaceful, cemetery.

The second graveyard was abandoned when Buffy made her way to it, the last graveyard of the night, she had decided, and then she could go home to some much deserved rest. The whole night had been slow and she hadn't run into more than one polgara demon and 3 vamps. 'If it keeps up this way I'll be out of shape in no time' she thought to herself as she made her way between the tombstones, watching the shadowed areas where the forest flanked the cemetery. 'Maybe I should look into getting a gym membership'. As she wandered through the rows of graves she was unaware of the presence stalking her from the woods.

From his place beneath the trees Harry watched as the creature made her way around the graves. He wasn't sure why he had taken notice of her when she entered the graveyard, after all she looked just like every other young woman he'd seen in town after his arrival two days ago. But she didn't feel that way, she felt different to him. After his confrontation with Voldemort, which had sadly ended in yet another stalemate, in his seventh year of Hogwarts he had been able to sense darkness in others, an ability he had made good use of in his two years of being an auror. It was his job that had sent him here, to this little, seemingly sleepy town in California, where everything seemed so normal and wholesome on the surface. The only reason this town had caught the eyes of his boss Susan Bones was its death rate, which was well above the norm for such a small town. That and the overwhelming sense of darkness this place radiated. A darkness that kept even the bravest of wizards far away from the area. Harry had been sent to investigate the phenomenon and as he watched the girl make her way deeper into the cemetery his senses told him he had found at least a part of the reason in her. While she looked like an innocent, beautiful woman just out for an evening stroll, there was darkness in her, an almost demonic presence hidden beneath her lovely exterior. He slowly inched his way closer to the creature drawing his wand as he went. When he was about thirty feet away from her she suddenly turned around, somehow having been alerted to his presence.

Buffy felt a presence behind her as she came to rest by the crypt that had one time held the secret passage to the master's lair, and quickly turned around seeing a young man barely out of his teens coming her way with a determined look on his face. She reached out with her slayer senses and found power and darkness in him. The darkness seeming to come from his head, no his forehead to be more precise. Every instinct in her body told her that the young man was not what he seemed and that coupled with the overwhelming sense of evil as well as the look on his face as he walked towards her, put him firmly in the demon category in her mind. Her eyes widened as he lifted the twig 'A twig? Come on!' in his hand and pointed it towards her. A red beam shot out of it and she barely avoided it by throwing herself to the ground. The sound of wood splintering was heard behind her as the red beam collided with an old tree and made a large, half-burned hole in it. Buffy jumped up and tackled the guy, man demon, whatever, trying to break his weapon or his neck, at the moment she really didn't care.

Harry's eyes widened in shock as the female looking creature moved faster, much faster than humanly possible, out of the way of his reducto curse. Then she was upon him. He managed to keep his wand out of her reach which only lead to her squeezing his neck with impossible strength. As his world slowly dissolved into dark spots due to his inability to draw breath, a desperate burst of accidental magic managed to knock the creature off him.

Buffy groaned as she sat up, shaking her head to clear it. She tasted the copper of blood in her mouth and by the feeling of her head she knew she had banged it pretty badly on a buried stone when she had crashed into the ground again. She had no idea how that thing had managed to push her away but she now knew that he was much more dangerous than she had initially thought and that her only chance to defeat it would be by throwing Mister Pointy into his chest from a distance, since she doubted she could with stand another burst of whatever that demon had used to attack her with. As she griped her trusty stake a small smile crept unto her face, she would teach this demon what it meant to tangle with a slayer.

Harry watched with trepidation as the creature got up, seemingly not even bothered by his magic and as he saw her vicious smile, he knew that if he did not kill her know he would not survive this encounter, in his mind he saw all his friends, his loved ones at the mercy of Voldemort because he had failed here. He lifted his wand again hoping that even if the creature wasn't harmed by his burst of accidental magic, the killing curse would not leave it unscathed.

Buffy steeled herself, drew in a breath and threw the stake at the demon's chest with all her might...

Harry steeled himself, drew in a breath and cast the curse at the creature with all his strength...

the graveyard was quiet the sun slowly rising, warming the tombstones and bathing them in a golden light, birds were waking and started chirping, while a mouse ran across the dewy grass scurrying for food for its young. All was peaceful and quiet. It was only hours later that the two bodies would be detected in the midst of the headstones. One Harry Potter of Great Britain found dead with a wooden stake buried in his chest, piercing his heart. And one Buffy Anne Summers bruised and bleeding from a wound in the back of her head, though that wound alone was not enough to explain her death.

Finished.

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